Hotel owners convicted of refugee child’s death
The owners of a complex of rented rooms, where refugees and migrants were accommodated, in Vrasna, Thessaloniki, were handed a suspended 2.5-year prison sentence over the death in April 2019 of a 4-year-old refugee boy who was crushed while playing next to a sliding metal door.
The husband and wife were found guilty of manslaughter through negligence while the three-member criminal court of Thessaloniki acquitted the Afghan parents of the boy who faced the same charge. In her closing argument the district attorney said it is “impermissible for our culture for children to be killed in this way.”
“For a door to fall where there are children playing, an earthquake must have occurred or a heavy demolition machine knocked it down,” she said. The hotel unit was under a contract with the International Migration Organization to host migrants and refugees who applied for international protection.
The child and two of his underage friends had been climbing on the sliding metal door (3.80 meters long and weighing 110 kg) that was in the hotel yard and which fell and crushed him.
